Tag: Favorites

 “Lives” by Arthur Rimbaud

Rimbaud’s “Lives” (Schmidt translation) feels deeply poignant watching what’s happening in the world. The line “What have they done with the Brahman who taught me the Proverbs?” strips Romantic notions of religion for a reality of war. “My wisdom is as much ignored as chaos…what is my nonbeing…” humbles us to invisibility. Then humbles even that. “I attempt to awaken my feelings in the memory of a wandering childhood” as we stumble to find some footing. To no avail, “skepticism can no longer be put to work.” The poem ends with a shattering sense of distance: we “can do nothing for you.”
– J. H. Danville

One translation of the poem, however, not Schmidt’s: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55037/lives

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg — Richard Hugo

Hugo was an early hero of mine. He still is. His poems are rich and thick with imagery, and they’re fun to read out loud. But he’s also a poet not afraid to journey close to the edge of sentimentality in his writing and then move away. To me, the very best poems, like this one, combine emotion with images, feeling with sensory details in a style that moves us when we read. It’s obvious that this little town, Philipsburg, triggers the poem for Hugo, but the writing takes us below the surface of the human condition, reaching toward truth.

– David James